


Keep this love in a photograph

by Lunannex



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, Spider-Man (Tom Holland Movies)
Genre: Angst, Fluff, Fluff and Angst, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Irondad, Parent Tony Stark, Peter Parker Needs a Hug, Precious Peter Parker, Tony Stark Acting as Peter Parker's Parental Figure, Tony Stark Has A Heart, spiderson
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-26
Updated: 2019-10-26
Packaged: 2021-01-03 23:22:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,468
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21187700
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lunannex/pseuds/Lunannex
Summary: "C'mon, when have I ever lied to you?" Peter fixed him with a mildly bored look and a slight pout."You really want me to answer that?" Tony lifted a brow, picking up a pen from the desk to point at him. "I have a list. You want it in chronological or alphabetical order?”"Do you really keep a list?" Peter blinked, sitting cross-legged on the floor. Of course that’s what part he’d choose to focus on."I might as well with how often you lie to my face." He crossed his arms over his chest, narrowing his eyes at his mentee, who at least had the decency to look a bit sheepish. "Seriously, one day you're going to develop a new power and I won't know until you're bleeding out in an alleyway dumpster." Peter, ever the teenager, merely rolled his eyes at the statement.———Aka Peter and Tony take a small trip down memory lane.





	Keep this love in a photograph

**Author's Note:**

> The title’s from Ed Sheeran’s ‘Photograph’ because I’m just that original lmao. Hope you enjoy it!!

Tony rubbed the bridge of his nose with a heavy sigh. This kid was an absolute _nightmare_. "So, what you're saying is that you ripped the _multimillion dollar suit_ and you have no idea how it happened?”

For a moment, he thought Peter might actually tell him the truth, judging by the way his eyes squinted together in thought. But he proved to be wrong when all he did was shrug nonchalantly. "Yeah.”

"That's bullshit." He stated, leaning back against the chair.

He hadn’t exactly _planned_ on visiting the Parker household, sitting in a teenage superhero’s room certainly wasn’t how he had expected to spend the day, but he couldn’t exactly say he minded. Even if Peter’s room was, for a lack of better word, a mess. Not enough of a mess that you couldn’t even walk around without tripping, but still a mess nonetheless. Scattered textbooks and legos all around the place, coupled with an unmade bed. It was admittedly a little endearing in a way.

Currently, the kid was in the process of ‘_cleaning_’ it out, as per his aunt’s request. May had left in a hurry, claiming to have been called last minute to work a friend’s shift, leaving the two alone in the apartment.  
  
"C'mon, when have I ever lied to you?" Peter fixed him with a mildly bored look and a slight pout.

"You really want me to answer that?" Tony lifted a brow, picking up a pen from his desk to point at him. "I have a list. You want it in chronological or alphabetical order?”

"Do you really keep a list?" Peter blinked, sitting cross-legged on the floor.

"I might as well with how often you lie to my face." He crossed his arms over his chest, narrowing his eyes at his mentee, who at least had the decency to look a bit sheepish. "Seriously, one day you're going to develop a new power and I won't know until you're bleeding out in an alleyway dumpster." Peter, ever the teenager, merely rolled his eyes at the statement.

"You'd know if I developed a new power." He crumpled a piece of paper and threw it on a nearby trashcan. “I’d probably be, like, either too excited or too freaked out to hide it.” He leaned back on his hands, smiling up at Tony coyly.

"Which is exactly why you wouldn’t tell me.” He said. "I'm lucky you're such a horrible liar, 'cuz _lordy_, god knows how many more gray hairs I'd have if you were actually good at keeping secrets."

"You’d have gray hairs even without me giving you heart attacks every other day.” The nightmare child said with a giggle. God the _audacity_ of teenagers these days.

“You’re a menace, truly, you are.”

“Learned from the best, Mister Stark.”

“Jesus, how does May _stand_ you? You have absolutely no respect for your elders whatsoever.” He sighed dramatically, shaking his head in disapproval.

“Oh, you love me.”

“Love is a strong word, I tolerate you at best.”

“You say that and yet here you are, willingly spending time with me.” Peter sent him a shit-eating grin over his shoulder, to which Tony responded with a roll of his eyes. Cheeky little brat.

“Yeah, well, someone has to make sure your scrawny little spider ass doesn’t die.” He leaned forward to ruffle his curls.

“I’m literally _just_ cleaning my room.” The kid scoffed, gesturing around the room.

“You’d somehow manage to even make that dangerous.” He muttered absentmindedly under his breath, barely fighting off the smirk that threatened to show.

His gaze wandered to the polaroids that were hung on the wall. Going from the top bunk of Peter’s bed all the way to the other side of the room. Of course he’d noticed them before, but now that he actually paid them mind, there were quite a lot of them. Pictures of sunsets and buildings, of May and the kid himself, his dorky friend, Ned. There were just, countless of them, all showcasing something unique and different. Tony didn’t even know where to start looking.

The first one to particularly catch his eye was one of Peter and that mysterious girl he and Ned were always around with. MJ, if his memory served him correctly. They were on Peter’s bunk bed, with him propped up against her chest, holding the camera at a selfie angle. MJ, on the other hand, had her arms wrapped around Peter’s shoulders from behind, giving the camera a lazy peace sign.

They both wore matching smiles on their faces, one less noticeable than the other but not any less fond.

"That your girlfriend?" He opted for a nonchalant tone as he stared at the scribbled little hearts at the bottom of the picture, though a sprinkle of curiosity still bled through.

"Huh?" Peter whirled around to blink dumbly at him. The mechanic saw the exact moment that he realized what, or rather, who he was referring to. His cheeks flushed scarlet and an overwhelming softness overtook his doe eyes.

"Oh...yeah…" His mouth twitched at the edges, which he tried to poorly cover up by looking down at his shoes. He seemed to be fully unaware of the absolute bewilderment those few words had left Tony in.

"Wait, seriously?" He breathed out incredulously. "You're shitting me." He deadpanned with an arched brow.

"No, yeah, we've...we've been dating for a while now." He pursed his lips in a sheepish smile, tugging on a loose thread on his jeans.

"And I'm just finding this out now? I'm hurt, Pete."

"I honestly thought you knew." He shrugged, as if it was no big deal, when it was, in fact, a big deal. His kid had a _girlfriend_ and he wasn’t aware of it. How had he not figured this out sooner? "Happy knows."

"You told him and not me?” He placed a hand over his chest in mock betrayal, standing up from his seat.

"I didn't exactly _tell_ him, he just found out. Since, y'know, he picks me up from school every other day."

"Huh." Tony stared at nothing as he blinked to himself. "Didn't picture Happy to be the type to be caught on in prepubescent high school romances."

“Guess I’m not as bad at keeping secrets as you thought, huh?”

“Oh no, don’t flatter yourself, kiddo. That hardly counts as a secret.” He fixed him a pointed look coupled with a sniff. "You take all these yourself?" He gestured around the polaroids, now looking at one of Peter, MJ and Ned, the disaster trio as he and May liked to call them, decked out in winter wear at a park.

"Aside from a few of them, yeah!” Peter bounced up from his place on the floor to stand beside him. "It's pretty fun, actually. I have, like, a ton of them. I just haven't gotten around to hanging them up yet." He swung back and forth on the balls of his feet, grinning, eyes wandering through the pictures as if they were the most amazing things in the world.

"Ah yes, the wonders of procrastination." He snickered amusedly, eyes still traveling along the pictures. Call him nosy for all he cared, these pictures were precious.

The next one made his heart do a gymnastics flip, and he had to physically restrain himself from cooing. In it was a smaller Peter, probably around seven to nine years old, sitting on a counter while eating a cookie. He was covering his mouth with his hand, presumably to hide a giggle, looking at whoever was taking the picture jubilantly.

And it was, admittedly, adorable.

"Aw, would you look at that? Itty bitty Petey Pie eating a cookie. How old were you, eight?" He swiftly grabbed the picture, ignoring the sputtering teenager behind him.

"Give me that…” Peter tried to snatch it out of his grip, but the mechanic was faster.

“Oh, are you _embarrassed_, Mister Parker?” Tony grinned, holding the picture over his head. "God, you haven't changed a bit." He chuckled as he put the picture back in its place.

"Still the same bouncy kid as you are now.” He grabbed the teen in a headlock to ruffle his hair, mouth twitching up at the edges when he shrieked in delight and tried to wiggle out of his grip.

The next picture made him nearly choke on his own breath, eyes no doubt widening as wide as saucers. His mouth opened and closed a few times even though no sound came out.

“Uhh...everything okay?” Peter leaned over to look at his face, eyebrows furrowed in confusion and mild amusement.

The picture showed Peter and Tony sleeping soundly on the couch. Tony’s arm was slung around his shoulders while the kid was slumped against his chest, legs draped over his lap. Needless to say, they looked relaxed.

“When’d you take this?” He cleared the lump in his throat and looked back at the kid, who was now staring at the picture with a crimson blush covering his cheeks. He rubbed the back of his neck and Tony nearly cried at the adorable gesture.

He had a picture of them in his bedroom and damn if that didn’t make Tony’s heart soar.

“Well _I_ didn’t, obviously, but Ms. Potts did. She gave it to me a while back, so…” He buried his face in the billionaire’s jacket sleeve, still blushing profusely. God, this kid was precious.

“Remind me to ask her for a copy.” Peter perked up at that, lifting his hand up from his sleeve to show his growing grin.

“Will do, Mister Stark.”

Tony huffed out a short laugh and sat down on the bunk bed, eyes still trained on myriad of pictures. They were all cute, really. But there was one in particular he couldn’t take his eyes off of.

That one picture, unlike the rest, was framed, sitting upon the teen’s cluttered desk innocently. He immediately recognized the man from May’s wedding pictures, it was Peter’s uncle. He was smiling at the camera widely while balancing a wild, curly haired, smaller Peter on his lap. The kid had his arms wrapped around the man’s neck while hiding his face on his uncle’s shoulder, but he was still grinning shyly nonetheless.

“What’re you-“ The kid stopped mid question, body sagging as he caught sight of what the mechanic was looking at.

"Oh…" A light frown had replaced the smile that was there not even a mere second ago. “That’s Uncle Ben.” He gingerly picked up the picture frame, caressing a thumb over it before dropping his hand to his side with a grimace. And just like that, whatever playfulness had been in the air was swept away.

He didn't know much about what had happened to Peter's family. The kid ran his mouth endlessly, talking about countless subjects, but never about that.

Of course he'd seen reports of plane crashes and muggings gone wrong back when he'd first recruited the kid, but he didn't know to what extent the grief ran. It was difficult to associate the live version of the Energizer Bunny in front of him with one who had faced so much death and loss.

"You know, he’d be proud of you.” Because what else was there to say? I’m sorry? Some cheap, non-substantial apology he’d inevitably heard millions of times before?

Peter didn't answer immediately, but he did peak at him through his lashes for a brief second. He hugged the picture close to his chest, just a little below his chin, and curled his fingers around the frame gently, almost as if he was afraid that it would be torn out of his grip.

And Tony felt an abrupt pang in his chest because _fuck_, this really was just a kid. A kid who’d faced death and loss more times than anyone his age ever should. And yet he still managed to stare ahead with so much hope.

He sunk down beside the mechanic, dropping like someone had cut his strings. He leaned his head against the wall to stare up at the ceiling with a roll of his jaw, eyes wide with sadness and grief.

Tony wanted nothing more than to brush the trouble away from his eyes and take the weight of the world off his shoulders, to hold him tight against his chest and never let go. But deep down he knew that, no matter how hard he tried, he’d never be able to shield Peter away from the harsh reality of the world, especially when he’d already experienced it himself first hand.

“I miss him…” He muttered in a wavering tone.

“He seemed like a good guy.” Tony raised his hand to brush a stray curl away from his eye, sliding it down until it was settled on his shoulder. His heart constricting when the kid leaned into the touch, like a child seeking comfort from their parent after the worst of nightmares.

“The best.” He smiled, that soft smile Tony knew oh so well, only now it had such a certain private joy in it that the mechanic had to physically restrain himself from looking away. “I think he would’ve liked you.” He stated, eyes glistening with unshed tears as he looked up at his mentor.

“Yeah?” Tony softened his voice down a notch, watching him with a solemn smile.

“Yeah.” The was a certainty in his voice which almost brought Tony to tears himself.

They looked down in unison, an unspoken agreement passing between them, one of both silence and respect.

He felt a soft weight on his shoulder and looked down at the mop of unruly curls. He watched Peter fidget until he was comfortable, pulling his legs up on the bed, the picture frame still firmly in his grip.

"I really want to believe you…” He started, fiddling with his sleeves. "Trust me, I...I _do_. I just,” He pursed his lips and scrunched his eyes tight. “I don't know how…" He breathed out, voice no louder than a murmur.

Tony hesitated for a brief second before he wrapped an arm around his shoulders with a sharp exhale. "You’ll get there, bud.”

“I know.” He didn’t have to look at him for Tony to know he was smiling, he heard it in his voice already. And that was enough for him.

He hoped that, wherever Ben was, he knew that his kid was well protected. That he knew that both him and May would do everything in their power keep him from harm’s way. That they’d do anything to keep his kid smiling and looking forward towards a better future. Because if anyone deserved that, it was Peter.

And Tony would make damn sure he did even if it was the last thing he did.

**Author's Note:**

> I’m still trying to get the hang of their personalities (especially Tony’s) so...please forgive me if the characterization isn’t that good haha-
> 
> Thank you for reading!💕✨


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